


Transistance

by cynicalfairyking



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: M/M, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-11 19:51:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13531353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynicalfairyking/pseuds/cynicalfairyking
Summary: Jason's tenure as Robin was a lot of things.  But mostly it was full of lies, because he was an imposter in a millions ways that Bruce couldn't understand.  And maybe something so small as a name is insignificant but it changes everything when he returns to Gotham after his rebirth.





	1. What’s in a Name Anyway?

A name. It’s the most significant part, because he’s always known who he is but its a matter of perception.  Certain words hold certain weights, carry certain perceptions.  He knows that all too well.

And yet, the most significant part is the easiest because he already knows who he is behind all the masks.  He’s known since he first saved that little kid, the one lugging that oversized camera and drowning in baggy clothes, from slipping off the Kane bridge way back when as Robin.  It had slipped out when he was trying to calm the kid, because if “Robin” was the name Dick’s mother used to call him, why couldn’t Robin’s alter-ego be derived fro them the name _his_ mother had used back when she was still coherent?

He’d always hated his birthname anyway.  It was too much his father’s creation.  Too stiff, too rigid, too controlling.  
He’d always been his mother’s son.  Drifting to sleep listening to her spin tales of hobbits, elves, and dragons—until it was him calming her by reading her the books she’d loved as a girl in her native Spanish.  
No matter what, he’d always be her Arrendajo Azul— _her Blue Jay._

When Talia hands him the identification papers, all boldly emblazoned with the words Jason Peter Todd, he doesn’t stop grinning for a week.  Because, while _she_ might be legally dead, _he_ has never felt more alive.


	2. Annotations

The books are his escape.  An envoloping security blanket of fictional worlds and social comentary.  There is something inexplicably calming about tearing into them with his red pen.  Scrawling all over the margins, discecting them paga by page.  Despite overflowing from their shelf in their coup to take over the room, they’re lovingly organized.  First by genre and they alphabetically by author.  Except for the unstable stack of favourites that towers next to his bed: Fitzgerald, Tolkien, Angelou, Bronte, Rowling, Wilde, Bray.

He’s a man of action, impulsive punches, and bursts of anger, but he’s in love with the power of words.  Static, stagnant words.  Books present a place where he can be himself.  A place where no one questions who he is and no one calls him by a fake idenity.  They’re the only luxary he allows himself to mindfully take advantage of in his stay here, and he devours them in a race to catch up for all the years he’d never have been able to afford waste money on something insignificant like paper.

* * *

 It’s his first week living with Bruce and Alfred, and Tim has taken to exploring the manor in his downtime whilst he can’t sleep.  For there is no longer any reason to spend his sleepless hours flitting through Gotham photographing Batman and Robin.  It’s on one of these sleepless wandering that he opens all the rooms in the hall.  
There’s a bedroom a couple over from his that’s filled with books, which is odd because Bruce would never store books in a room other than the library, let alone a guest room.  Then he notices that the room is covered in a fine layer of dust as if no one has been in here months.  He should turn around and leave, because his relationship to the houses occupants is already strenous and he’s tressaping, but he doesn’t because he’s currious and Tim Drake isn’t one to let sleeping birds lie.

His fingers trail absentmindedly along the spines as he wanders the room.  They’re alphabetasized in sections.  Classics, Gothic, Romanitics, Fantasy, Modern. He chooses one at random: _Hamlet_ , by William Shakespeare.  Messy red scrawl glares up at him as he reads through the first act.  He finds himself drawn to the detailed analysis and sarcastic wit of the previous reader and by dawn he’s devoured Hamlet, and 2 others; the room becomes Tim’s escape from Bruce’s icy disapointment and Alfred’s chilling silence.  He finds himself befriending the voice of the annotate he’s never met.  The person that seems to understand Tim’s anger and frustrations and uncertainties.

He’s practically read through the whole room when he finds it.  A small blank brown leather journal.  On the very last page he see it.  In swirly black ink, that he’s fairly sure is Dick’s, it says “Happy Birthday ~~////////~~!” But the name has been angrilly scribbled out, and underneath in that same piercing red ink reads “Jason Peter Todd”.

* * *

He understands now.  He almost wishes he didn’t, but he does.  It’s beautiful in a way that burns, because the truth is hardly ever pretty.  He knows who the new player is.  He hasn’t proved it yet, but he knows who’s under that Red Hood.

It’s a conflict he’d never though he’d be in—he’d sworn himself to Batman when he’d become Robin, but he’d made a promise before that.  A promise to himself than ran deeper than that every could, because everything he’d done since that day, even taking up the mantel, he’d done it for _him_ : the Boy Wonder, _his boy wonder—_ he owes Jason a dept he’ll never be able to repay, and maybe the small token of his silence will have to do.

What he needs now are answers.

How?

Why?

But neither of those will really satisfy him.

He wants to understand, but no amount of the world’s best detective work will bring him that.


	3. Shattered Scattered Birdsong

There was something about the pretender that he couldn’t quite put his finger one.  The glimmer of familiarity that danced in his eyes and in the bird song that poured from his lips.

If it weren’t for that, Bruce’s failure to figure out his identity would be not only pathetic, but hilarious.  Instead it scared him, because he’d thought he’d changed.  He thought he was free from his old life, and here was someone who clearly knew who he was.  Why didn’t Bruce know then.  What was his replacement hiding? 

“Jay?”  Is not the word he’s expecting to hear, while dressed in a copy of the uniform he died in holding his replacement at knife point on the top of Titan Tower.  Huh?  The pressure in his grip slips and the pretender takes this as an opportunity to further loosen Jason’s grip on him.  How did he know?  None of his old associates should have the information to connect his current identity as Red Hood, with this random stranger dressed as the dead Robin.

“That’s your name right?  That’s what you told me it was after you saved my life.  You may have forgotten, but I never did.  How could I?  My childhood hero had just told me that I was valid, that he was like me, and assured me life wouldn’t always suck.” 

There’s a jolt in his stomach.  He can’t go through with this.  He staggers backwards, knive clattering to the floor.  He remembers clear as day; the sobbing kid on the top of Kane Bridge, the shattered camera lense, his own helplessness at hearing the kid’s story, the rush of freedom as he named himself.  He can’t kill his replacement.  Not when he presents Jason with one of his few successes as Robin, not when he actually calls him by his name.

No. He can’t kill Tim Drake.  Not now.  Probably not ever.

“Are you alright?” The voice is too soft, and the light hand on his shoulder is too caring for the boy he was trying to kill just moments ago.

“Why?” His voice breaks, croaking out the word.  The world he thought he knew is slipping, spinning out of control.  How can his plan work, if he lacks even the conviction to hate his replacement?

“Because you were my idol, my hero.  Because you and the memories of you scattered around Gotham keep me going.  Keeping me pushing through and alive.  Because you were Robin… my Robin and you kept fighting even though you were going through the same thing I am.”

How had this boy put some much faith in him?  The failure.  _The_ _Boy Blunder._ So much misplaced trust, it was overwhelming. He shook off his replacement’s embrace.  “Shut Up!  You’re mistaken.  I’m no hero.  Just a broken bird who’s learned the truth the hard way.”


End file.
